Why is TruthVine different?

Put simply, it’s faster, easier and more affordable for churches to get their sermons online than many alternative services:

You don’t need to be a technical genius. If you know how to send an email, you’ll be fine!

It gives you everything you need, rather having to manage lots of different software and services.

You can record in a few clicks, upload in moments and copy sermons onto CD too.

It’s cheaper than some well-known sermon hosting sites.

There are no distracting adverts popping up when you use TruthVine.

Who is TruthVine for?

TruthVine is being developed to help Bible-believing churches that preach the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re trying to make the service as affordable as we can – to help likeminded churches with their budgets.

Who produces TruthVine?

TruthVine was founded by Samuel Jack in 2013 with the aim of helping churches use technology to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ more effectively. Sam runs Seaturtle Software Ltd and is a deacon at Welcome Hall Evangelical Church, Catshill, Bromsgrove.

Can I see TruthVine in action?

What does it cost?

For the first 30 days, nothing! For prices beyond that, please see our pricing page.

Getting set up with TruthVine

What do I need to use it?

For TruthVine you need:

A church website (we can help if you don’t have one – get in touch)

A sound system (preferably)

A laptop PC

Internet access at the church or at home.

How does TruthVine work with my website?

After signing up, we send you instructions on how to insert a little piece of Javascript within your website, behind the scenes. You only have to do this once and it’s usually much easier than it sounds. But we’ll help if you get stuck. After the code is on your website (for example, on a web page you’ve called ‘sermons’) it cleverly ‘pulls’ your sermons onto your website – every time you upload a sermon. This happens automatically and it’s the genius bit: Because you don’t need to keep making changes to your website every time your want to add a new sermon. TruthVine does it all for you. Upload on your laptop … and it appears on your website!

What kind of sound system do I need?

If you record your sermons on a laptop or PC already, then you’re completely ready for TruthVine – and there’s no need to do anything different with your equipment.

But we’re aware that some churches may still use cassettes or not record sermons at all. So here’s some advice for them.

If you have a basic sound system then it’s most likely to have a microphone that’s plugged into an amplifier, connected to loudspeakers. If you look at the amplifier, then you may see a spare ‘line out’ socket that could be used to connect directly to your laptop.

The cable you need will probably look like this (the link takes you to Amazon where you could buy a lead if you don’t have one).

Note: If you try recording on your laptop this way, then sometimes the recording may be poor quality or too quiet. If that’s the case then an inexpensive USB audio interface like the Behringer UCA202 can help improve recording quality. (You will probably need a cable like this to connect your sound system to the USB digitizer).

What if we don’t have a sound system?

If you’re a very small church and you don’t use any amplification at all, then it’s still possible to use TruthVine by simply plugging a microphone into your laptop (one like this, perhaps) and positioning this very near to the person who is preaching (the closer, the better, for quality). Of course, you’d probably then have to record the whole service rather than going up the front and starting the recording half-way through the service, which would be distracting. But that’s OK – because TruthVine lets you edit your recording afterwards. So you could record everything and then trim around the sermon easily.

What kind of laptop do I need?

To use TruthVine Studio (our recording and editing software) you need a laptop that runs Windows (7, 8 or 10). But if you have any other kind of laptop, that’s fine too. You can just use our web interface to upload recordings, though you will have to prepare them yourself.

Do I need any particular software?

Yes. As a TruthVine subscriber, we send you login details for your TruthVine account. From there, you can download the TruthVine software to your laptop – and use it to record sermons, upload them and copy onto CDs if you wish. If you’d rather use other recording software, that’s fine too – you can upload the files and enter the sermon details in the TruthVine management website.

Do I need Internet access at my church?

This depends on how quickly you want to get your recording online. It’s fine to record the service, take your laptop home and upload it from there – if you have the Internet at home. But the beauty of TruthVine is that you can upload your sermons within moments of the closing ‘Amen’. TruthVine makes the sermon file size very small (eg. often under 10mb), so uploading can be very fast.

There are several different ways that you can access the Internet at your church:

Your church building is online already: Some bigger churches may have offices where pastors and staff do their work – and have the Internet within the building already.

You tether your laptop to a smartphone: Some people get their laptops online via a mobile phone that has access to the Internet. Here’s a brief guide on doing this on the PC Advisor website.

You use a BT Wifi hotspot: Some laptop users in your church may have a BT Wifi account already. This gives them use of thousands of Internet access hotspots across the UK. There may be one within range of your building. You can find out by checking your church post-code with BT here. If no-one in your church uses BT wifi already, then subscriptions start at £6 per month.

You use a USB dongle: Very simple. Just plug one of these little sticks into your laptop to get it online anywhere there’s a mobile signal. Here’s a Uswitch guide to how they work and a list of the latest deals. When we checked, these were as low as £3 per month which would give you 250MB of data (about enough for 25 sermons per month).

Using TruthVine

Talk me through how it would work on a typical Sunday …

OK, so assuming you’ve set up everything correctly, then here is what happens:

Before the service, you connect your laptop to the sound system as normal and switch it on.

As the sermon progresses, you can type in the preacher’s name, sermon title and series (if there is one).

You press the Stop button when the sermon/service ends

You can click to upload the sermon via TruthVine (either using wireless Internet access at your church or at your home later). TruthVine compresses the file size so it’s small (usually under 25mb) so it doesn’t take long at all to upload.

Can you search for older sermons?

Yes, from your website’s sermons page, you can search for previous recordings using the name of the preacher, sermon, series, topic, Bible book or other keywords.

Not everyone is online. We still need to copy CDs. How will that work?

No problem. Hopefully using TruthVine will save some time and money as some people will listen online rather than request CDs. But TruthVine also creates a copy that you can burn to CDs as normal.

Our church wants to use TruthVine but can we upload our old sermons too?

Yes, you can upload each sermon individually. TruthVine Studio also has a feature to help you upload batches of sermons in one go, just by filling out a simple spreadsheet.

We currently record everything onto CD, and we have lots of old sermons recorded on CD. Could we upload from CD?

Certainly! TruthVine Studio has a feature to read sermons from CD. You just select which tracks make up the sermon, and it will merge them together into one audio file. Then you can edit it and upload just as if you had recorded it directly into TruthVine Studio

Once we have uploaded a sermon, can we remove it easily?

Yes. You can hide a sermon from public view by marking it as ‘unpublished’. It’ll still be stored online in case you wanted to make it public again anytime. In due course, we are adding a feature where sermons can be removed permanently.

If our church decides to stop using TruthVine, what happens to our sermons?

When your subscription ends, your sermons will be removed from TruthVine. But, before this happens, we’ll send you an email about how to download all your files to your PC. Then we’ll give you two weeks (after your subscription ends) to do this.

Exciting plans for TruthVine

Do you have any ideas for TruthVine in the future?

Yes! We hope to find many more ways for churches to spread the Gospel using the power of new technology. Live streaming and mobile apps are possibilities. But it’s early days.

How to get in touch

I’ve got a question/suggestion or need technical help, how can I reach you?

Please email team@truthvine.com or call 0333 344 0845 (or if outside the UK: +44 333 344 0845). We’ll try to respond ASAP but please be aware that we’re not a huge team, so there may be a delay in getting back to you.

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